CME Net Short Exposure Reaches ATH: Why Institutions Bearish on Ethereum

Ethereum has seen some selling pressure today and has rolled back on a portion of its gains. The cryptocurrency was bouncing back from below the $1,000 levels but has found hurdles on lower timeframes. Related Reading | Outflows Rock Bitcoin As Institutional Investors Pull The Plug, More Downside Coming? At the time of writing, ETH’s price trades at $1,166 with a 3% loss in the last 24 hours and a 3% profit in the past 7 days. Ethereum and Binance Coin were two of the best-performing assets in the crypto top 10 market cap. Their gains were able to pull back Bitcoin’s dominance which was close to reclaiming 50% of the sector’s total market cap. The second crypto in the top 10 decoupled from Bitcoin, while the latter stuck, ETH moved to the upside. When Bitcoin lags, and Ethereum leads, is often considered an indicator of potential downside. In 2021, when Ethereum moved on its own, the crypto market experienced downside price action. According to Arcane Research, Ethereum not only moved on its own on the spot market, but the futures market saw some interest action. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) ETH futures contracts have been trading at a discount when compared to ETH’s spot price. This divergence seems to hint at future losses for Ethereum. As seen below, the ETH futures contract has been trending to the downside since the beginning of June 2022 with an increase in open interest. This is the first time since the la...